Where is the Gandhi of Islam? by Charles Moore

He is not always worth reading, Charles Moore, but this article is a tour de force. Go read.

Where is the Gandhi of Islam?
By Charles Moore
Telegraph
09/07/2005

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was in Singapore on Thursday, having helped London's successful Olympic bid. His stricken face showed his shock, and of course he condemned the attacks. Then he analysed them. They were not, he said, attacks "against the mighty and the powerful", but against "working-class Londoners". Would they have been all right, one wondered, if they had been against the mighty and powerful, or if they had cleverly found a way of killing only middle-class Londoners? Then Mr Livingstone said: "This is not an ideology or even a perverted faith." Why did he want to say that? How - if, as the authorities tell us, the attacks were carried out by Islamist extremists - could this be true?

The mayor of our bombed city has himself got involved with Muslim leaders who say some interesting things. Last year, Mr Livingstone extended a warm welcome in London to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a mainstream, world-famous spiritual leader based in Qatar. Qaradawi has supported suicide bombing against Israelis, the treatment of all Jews as legitimate targets, the whipping of homosexuals and the killing of all Americans - civilian and military - in Iraq. Surely, Ken recognises an ideology here, and a faith of sorts? Yet he praised, rather than condemned, and so now, when the logical extension of such ideas hits King's Cross and the Edgware Road and kills dozens of his voters, he has to say that such deeds arise from no belief at all.

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Mohammed Abdul Bari from the East London Mosque ... welcomed to the opening of the London Muslim Centre Sheikh Abdul Rahman al Sudais, the Saudi-government-appointed imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. In Mecca two years ago, al Sudais described Jews as "scum of the earth", "rats of the world" and "monkeys and pigs who should be annihilated". Yet, criticise al Sudais, and Mohammed Abdul Bari leaps furiously to his defence.

As I write, I have beside me an article that appeared during our recent election campaign in Muslim Weekly. By Sheikh Dr Abdalqadir as-Sufi, it calls for the replacement of British parliamentary democracy with "a new civilisation based on the worship of Allah", attacks the Conservatives for being "in the hands of an illegal Jewish immigrant from Romania" and speaks of the "near-demented judaic banking elite". These views are expressed by an educated Muslim in a Muslim publication. Are these Muslim views, non-Muslim views, anti-Muslim views?

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What about the methods of the police? Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has shown himself so obsessed with the implementation of the recommendations of the Macpherson report that followed the Stephen Lawrence case that he has been officially criticised for "hanging out to dry" three officers falsely accused of racism. His approach to policing Muslims appears to be to seek the consent of those he supposes to be community leaders before "going in". It is surely not right that they should have a veto on whether or not an inquiry is pursued, and it must be asked whether all of them could be trusted not to protect some of those who merit police attention.

The methods matter, too. Although offence should always be avoided if possible, if the police will not use dogs in their investigations of Muslims (as they may do with almost anyone else), and if they undertake never to go into the religious parts of Islamic buildings, then some people with things to hide will hide them.
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When did you last hear criticisms of named extremist groups and organisations by Muslim leaders, or support for their expulsion, imprisonment or extradition? How often do you see fatwas issued against suicide bombers and other terrorists, or statements by learned men declaring that people who commit such deeds will go to hell? When do Muslim leaders and congregations insist that a particular imam leave his mosque because of the poison that he disseminates every Friday? When did a British Muslim last go after a Muslim who advocates or practises violence with anything like the zeal with which so many went after Salman Rushdie? Why is not more stigma attached to the Muslims who are murdering other Muslims every day in Iraq and the Middle East?

What communal protection is offered to those Muslims who really are brave and confront Islamist violence, or the poor treatment of women, or call for democracy in the Middle East? How much do mainstream political parties with Muslim councillors and candidates really insist on their religious moderation and co-opt them to extrude the bad people lurking within their communities? I understand and accept that there are many moderates among British Muslims, but I want to know why Britain gets so pitifully little to show for their moderation.